Change is pain

30f km Editorial comment zk

While the current topic on people’s lips right now is the embarrassing and disappointing defeat suffered by the ruling party during last week’s local government elections, the lesson learnt, as poet Mzwakhe Mbuli puts it, is that; “change is pain”.

Of course, we all know this from childhood when we are weaned off our mother’s breasts and right throughout our adult life when fate throws us “curved balls” and “sucker punches” when we least expect them.

Or when our misfortunes or fortunes change within a twinkle of an eye and our world either comes crumbling down upon us, or when we’re unexpectedly raised to heights we’ve never imagined.

And while this “yo-yo” phenomenon is an accepted fact of life among politicians, investors, speculators and gamblers – to the majority of ordinary folks like you and I, who enjoy our boring “9 to 5 routine” lifestyle, we seem to prefer the simple things in life that have no hang-ups while the former worry about the results of “casting spoils”.

As the veteran and legendary former Zonk and Drum journalist Mike “Mazurkie” Phahlane, who moulded my budding career in journalism back the in the early 70s would often say; “Just think of all the wonderful things you would be by now, if Sigmund Freud, was your father …?

Freud was an Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, the clinical method of treating psychopathology through dialogue between patients and the psychoanalyst.

Answering his own question about Freud being my Dad, Mazurkie, would emphasise the importance of “communication” between people.

“Then,” he would growl in his thick, hoarse voice, with his body hunched forward as he subbed my copy with a pencil, and add “he (Freud) would teach you how to be a better writer, and a better communicator through your subjects in your copy”.

This is the same notoriously famous “Mike Mazurkie” and former friend and career “adviser” to world re-known Cape Town-born international acclaimed jazz pianist whose name he (Mazurkie) claims to have suggested be changed from some strange sounding German/Afrikaans name to “Dollar Brand” (now Abdullah Ibrahim) – which, according to Mazurkie sounded more appropriate for a young jazz musician from apartheid South Africa who was planning on launching his music career on the international circuit in the US in late 60s.

According to Mazurkie, to thank him for the new Americanised version of his name, “Dollar” named the tune “Tintinyane” in his album “Blues for a Hip King” after Mazurkie’s daughter, Tintinyane Phahlane.

The entire album was in fact dedicated to King Sobhuza II of Swaziland for “harbouring” anti-apartheid activists in the kingdom which was also used as a conduit into neighbouring Mozambique and Tanzania and further into Europe and America.

Yes, Mazurkie’s words rang through as I watched the results of the elections filter through the screen on my television screen.

I watched with a huge lump in my throat as the organisation that has carried the hopes and aspirations of millions of peace loving South Africans of all races since its inception in Bloemfontein in 1912, was reduced to a shadow of its former glory.

However, looking back at the highlights of the past week, the sad outcome of the August 3, local government elections was in fact prophesied decades ago by the very elders who are today the ancestors who in unison in the world beyond – have guided the organisation from its humble beginnings on that fateful day in Mangaung in Bloemfontein, on January 18, 1912 and which later heralded the dawn of democracy for all the people of South Africa in 1994.

Perhaps, as my mentor Mike Mazurkie Phahlane, would have groaned; “Just think of all the good things South Africa would be by now if we were all Sigmund Freud’s children?